Can Of Corn

Best of the West

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It's no longer breaking news that the NL West this season is the paltriest of divisions. The West, at this juncture, is a cumulative 58 games under .500 (which, of course, means they're 58 games under .500 against teams from outside the division) and has an aggregate run differential of -479. Thanks to the folly of the unbalanced schedule, it's likely that eventual division champ will manage a winning record, but that's a contrived merit.

Anyhow, that this year's NL West is among the worst divisions since divisional play began in 1969 is beyond dispute, and I'm hardly the first one to point this out. So let's delve a little more deeply into the "rolling brownout" that is the NL West.

What we'll do is construct an NL West VORP All-Star team and compare it to the leaders of the remaining five divisions with this question in mind: Could the best of the West possibly be worse than a single team in another division? These ad hoc teams will comprise the VORP leaders at each of the eight positions, a DH (or, in the NL, the top offensive VORP not among the best at each position), the top five starting pitchers and the highest relief VORP. Obviously, this is a frontline, offensive comparison, so bench strength, bullpen depth and team defense won't be accounted for. Still, this will provide us with a snapshot of how the West compares. So here's how the NL West All-VORP team fares against the likes of the Red Sox, White Sox, Angels, Braves and Cardinals:

Okay, so the NL West All-VORP team shakes out better than any other single team in baseball, and this column would've been a lot cooler if that weren't the case. Still, they're only about five wins better than the Cardinals, and that's semi-damning stuff. The best of an entire division is only a handful of games better than a single team, at least in terms of the VORP of the core contributors. Add a healthy Scott Rolen into the mix and give Taguchi a full season's worth of plate appearances (which he would have were he an actual DH), and that margin might dissipate.

Think the Yankees have center-field problems? Observe …

Player VORP FRAA
Bernie Williams 11.9 -2
Steve Finley -3.7 -2

Finley has been squarely worse at the plate and just as lamentable with the glove. The Angels have the bench strength to keep Finley off the field for the balance of the season, and that's just what they should do.

Jason Marquis, who's hitting .329/.337/.494 in 83 plate appearances this season, came within one VORP run of tying Taguchi for Cardinal DH dibs. So that's something.

Pardon the following "fan boy" rumination of sorts … Recently, Albert Pujols and Chris Carpenter passed Derrek Lee and Roger Clemens, respectively, in the VORP rankings. We now have legitimate, nuanced debates before us for the NL MVP and Cy Young awards. That wasn't the case two weeks ago. What does this have to do with the prevailing theme of this column? Not bloody much …

That's all for this time around. Since I came reasonably close to predicting the exact score of the Texas/Ohio State game last week, I figure I should take another whack at it: UCLA 31, Oklahoma 27.